Saving Baelfire
by Ellynne
Summary: The weaver knew how to catch a dying soul in her nets. So, she spun a web for Baelfire. A saving-Baelfire-from-Zelena fic.
1. Making a Web

I don't own Once Upon at Time.

**Note: **The main character in this, Alix, is from some stories I started writing as a kid and has never been published anywhere (although she gets some passing mentions in my story, **Ill Met by Moonlight**).

I was upset at recent events in the show, so I decided to send her over to fix them.

X

The irony is that, if the woman known as Emma Swan had seen the ethereal creature walking the edges of the Enchanted Forest, unlike the people who had grown up in that world, she would have found the words at once to describe her: something from a fairy tale.

The people of that world wouldn't have thought it. Magic might be real in their world, but it was as solid and unsurprising as the dirt beneath their feet or a cold rain in autumn. Fairies, sirens, they were warm creatures of flesh and blood you could touch with your two hands (whether or not you'd be wise to do so).

For Emma alone, the world fairy tale could still mean something too fragile and pretty to be real. This being—very like a woman but far too lovely to be one—was an illusion, like a confection spun of glass and light. She had all the beauty of a soap bubble waiting to vanish at a touch or breath of frost on a window about to be dismissed by a flame.

Her braided hair was sunlight yellow. Her skin was the color of snow at sunrise when the morning light may touch it with just a hint of pink rose. Only her eyes seemed real. Their burning, blue light was too intense to be anything else. She wore pale, faded lavender and ghostly shades of white.

Alix set up her nets.

Different nets, as any fisherman could tell you, for different fish. Different weights to hold the nets to different depths to catch the fish that swam there. The rules applied to her as well.

Most of her webs, spun delicately as lace, were all silver and starlight, innocent strands for an innocent soul or the echoes of one. She had to be grateful for the forces that had (once again) shattered this realm. Like getting the yolk of an egg, some things were so much easier once the shell was cracked.

It was the other land that was troubling her.

Still, she set her lace nets to catch her prey where it ran low to the ground through woods and fields. She set them, pretty as snowflakes, high above to catch dreams that had traveled among the stars (and through the stars, and through the darkness to the shadows that lay beyond). In a ruined castle and along deserted roads, she hunted. She made other webs, spinning threads the dark colors of grief and others the unchangeable hues of courage. She found fear and anger, pain, betrayal, love, and a thousand other echoes.

Last of all, she placed her web around the white ice that hid the darkness, a place that could never be found by light of day, only by night.

A tricky web, she thought. So easy to gather what she did not want. No pretty lace here, no hint of anything that did not speak of purpose; nothing that, in its very lines and form, did not speak of guarded readiness (so obvious, Alix knew, but the darkness she walked around was subtle and ever shifting, so her webs stood strong and honest). She placed the nets with utmost care and walked around them, waiting and listening as the winds began to blow.

The webs caught them, as they always did. The winds, touching those threads, took visible form, ghosts and memories that struggled against the threads that bound them. She watched as they twisted and writhed, seeking escape. Then, they burst free, leaving the tattered bits that clung to her webs behind them.

Alix began to circle round, gathering them up. She held each piece up to the moonlight, examining, listening to each voice, running them through her hands as ardently as a blind woman feeling secrets, looking for the taints that might so easily poison it and destroy all her work.

Then, she put each piece carefully away.

There was another world she needed to search.

The many souls of the cities she searched were like sounds drowning out the music she needed to hear. Still, Alix set up nets. She called winds, she searched for bits and pieces in the places where her instincts said she might find them.

In New York, she found a small apartment where he had lived. She sat crosslegged on the floor of his room as the sound came down from the old record player on the shelf above. She closed her eyes, head tilted back and mouth slightly open, as if the sound were rain she could catch on her tongue.

Last of all, she stood in the tangled forests of Neverland. Here, she made nets of green threads that grew leaves and thorns. She spun shadows, and the starlight that graced her threads was cold, an alien watcher instead of the promise of wonder.

The harvest in the world without magic had been thin. In Neverland, where time was meaningless and echoes of the past blended into each new day, she found many scraps of memory, each blending into the other threads.

Alix looked them over. It was enough, she thought. Not all that the one who summoned her had hoped for, but as much as she had hoped for and a little bit more.

When all the pieces were gathered, she set up her loom and began to weave.

Spinner, weaver, there were threads of fate tying to two together. It bound her to this work.

The warp was made of golden thread, spun fine as gossamer. This spinning was none of her handiwork

Again and again, each piece was examined. Now, she did not look just for taints, she looked for the length of each piece, for its strength and weakness, for how it fit—or didn't—against all the others, joining fragments as carefully as if she were piecing together broken glass, jagged glass edged with poison to destroy everything with one careless nick.

Now and then, there was not enough. Pieces ran short or didn't fit—or were gone entirely, leaving nothing but gaps. When that happened, she picked up more of the golden thread and worked it in to cover the gaps.

Till, at last, her weaving was done.

Alix gathered it up, examining it closely. Not perfect, she thought. So much less than he'd hoped for but still more than she'd expected. The work was flawed, as would be its making.

But, it was enough.

Or so she hoped.

The time was drawing near. She didn't see futures, but centuries of work had left her sensitive to the stirrings of fate around her. The time was soon.

She found her way again to the shattered realm, the Enchanted Forest that was, and found the ragged threads that still bound it to the small world that had been born out of it. She followed the path to Storybrooke.

She had arrived in time. The woman they called the Savior, their fair swan, held the hands of a man she had loved (Alix, with an eye for weaving, saw all the threads that had woven those two lives together, satisfied she had got it right).

She held out the cloth she had woven to the winds as they gathered. She saw the spinner bow over his dying son and watched as the man's soul broke free of his flesh.

_Here,_ she thought. _Come here. See what I have made you?_

The soul trembled, uncertain.

_Here. It is not your time. The dead do not call you. Not yet. Come here._

The soul drifted towards her. It sensed what she held, moving towards it.

Alix held her breath (not that she needed to breathe, but the habit was strong in her and she had a predator's need to taste the air for danger and prey). The soul drifted closer. It seemed to look at what she held. She felt curiosity more than recognition. It seemed to look at what she held, with a sense that it should know what it was.

Tentatively, it reached out—and was sucked into the weaving Alix had made for it.

Hastily, Alix put it down. She had two last treasures, a drop of blood and a single hair, precious because they were the only ones she had. Without them, what she was doing would fail. Even with them, it might fail.

She placed the hair over the place where the heart would be and let the blood drop fall over it. The garnet drop slid itself over the hair, like a larger snake devouring a smaller one. Then, both were sucked inside her weaving. Alix watched as her handiwork began to shift and change, becoming solid, colors blossoming across it as it took form.

A young boy, perhaps fifteen years old, lay on the ground in front of her. He seemed to be asleep. His face twisted in a nightmare and he woke, gasping for breath.

"Papa, no! _Papa!_" he yelled. He looked around. Alix was quite sure he didn't notice her. All he saw—or didn't see—was the one person he was looking for. "Papa?" he said. "Papa, where are you?"

Alix cleared her throat. "Baelfire?" she asked.

The boy looked at her, confused. "Who are you? Where's my father? Did he—" the boy's face crumpled. "Did he leave me?"

"Oh, let's not go down that road again," Alix said. "Hello, Baelfire, I'm Alecto, but you can call me Alix. I'm a friend of your father's. He asked me to help you.

"This is rather a long story, but I put together as much of your past as I could. I'm afraid I missed a lot in two worlds where you've lived, although I did save some things. For example, I'm betting your dying for a pizza about now. . . ."


	2. The Kindness of Fire

"Papa, no! _Papa!_" Bae yelled. He looked around. He was alone in a forest, but it wasn't the one near the village. It was also daytime, even if the sky was overcast and gray, not night. "Papa?" he asked again, still hoping for an answer. "Papa, where are you?"

He heard someone clear her throat. He turned around and saw a woman. He wondered at first if she was a ghost, she looked so insubstantial. "Baelfire?" she asked.

She knew his name, which no one in another world could know. Could they? "Who are you? Where's my father? Did he—" Grief flooded him. But, there was something wrong. Bae remembered falling through the portal, he remembered his father clinging to the dagger and letting him go—

—_He remembered a pain searing through his hand, a stone in the earth sliding away and form made of nothing but darkness rising up from it as Baelfire felt his life draining away—_

—_He was frozen in place while the piper who had said he would let him go if he wanted to return to his father reached for his heart to crush it, only to have his father appear and stop him—_

—_Baelfire felt the life draining out of him. His father held him tight against his chest. Somehow, Bae knew Papa was keeping him alive. He saw him let go of the dagger, felt something warm flow around him—_

—_Papa was holding the piper as close to him as he'd held Baelfire. The piper changed, becoming a man, as Papa drove a knife through both their hearts and vanished. . . ._

"Did he leave me?" Bae asked, uncertain at the chaos in his mind.

The woman looked much less ethereal as she rolled her eyes. She seemed to be changing, he thought, becoming more substantial and less like a dream. "Oh, let's not go down that road again," she said. "Hello, Baelfire, I'm Alecto, but you can call me Alix. I'm a friend of your father's. He asked me to help you."

Alecto. Bae stared at her, remembering where he'd heard that name. A _friend_ of his father's?

"This is rather a long story," the woman went on. "But, I put together as much of your past as I could. I'm afraid I missed a lot in two worlds where you've lived, although I did save some things. For example, I'm betting you're dying for a pizza about now. . . ."

_Pizza. The best pizza in the world was in the city of New York, where Bae had taken Henry. . . ._

_Henry. Who was Henry?_

He saw fragments of something that felt like a confused dream. The piper's country, Neverland. There was a boy he'd been hunting for—_this_ boy. Papa was there. Papa was helping Bae rescue the boy. No, Papa was trying to kill the boy. Only Bae had some magic that stopped him. . . .

A dream. That had to be a dream. How many times had Bae wished he could stop Papa?

Except that he'd been wrong. Papa told him he wanted to save the boy because of Bae, but the only way he could stop the piper was by dying with him.

Bae remembered being angry, yelling at Papa. "The piper is my friend!"

Papa's eyes, full of fear—real fear, though he'd told Bae he wasn't afraid of anything. "His true nature . . . is darker and more repulsive than you should ever be exposed to!"

And he remembered standing frozen while the Piper looked him over mockingly, him and a woman named Belle (Papa loved this woman, had loved her for a long time, even though Bae didn't see how that could be possible).

"Hmm, you both look so adorable. Hard to tell which one to kill first." The Piper's face changed as he looked at Bae. More impossibilities ran through Bae's head as he understood why the Piper wanted to kill him. Because Bae was the son of the man the Piper hated, because Bae was the father of the boy he'd failed to kill (fragments, nonsense, how could he be a father?).

"No, it isn't," the Piper said.

"You.

"You first."

And he reached for Bae's heart.

Then, Papa appeared, stopping him.

_You're my happy ending._

"Baelfire? Baelfire! Stop doing this! You need to focus, do you hear me? Focus on the sound of my voice. Focus on where you are, on what's happening now." Something was thrust up against his face. "Do you smell that? Tell me, what are those smells? Name them for me."

"P—pine," Bae said. "Dirt. Leaves."

He was in the forest. The woman—Alecto? Alix?—was holding a fistful of dirt and old leaves held around a wad of crushed pine needles. He stared at her. She had changed again. She looked stronger and more solid, as if she were carved from stone. Her grip on his shoulder was rock hard.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We need to be careful. I did my best, but you're not whole."

"I—I don't understand. What happened? Papa—"

"You've heard of Seers? People who see the future? I listen to the past. I spin webs to catch the echoes of it that are carried on the winds. I captured and wove together as much of your past as I could, all the memories I could find. But, this world, it's noisy and you were always trying to be quiet and hidden. The other, time was meaningless there. Hard to catch the past where the past doesn't exist.

"I knit them together as well as I could, but what I made wasn't whole. You still need to make it part of you. But slowly. Too many pieces were coming at you at once. When that happens, try to breathe. Try to think of the present, to hold yourself in the moment. Can you do that?"

Bae shook his head, still not understanding. "Why? You wove my past together? What about my real memories? What happened to them?"

"Ah, funny you should ask. Put your hands together, make a bowl of them."

Confused, Bae obeyed. She dropped the pine needles and dirt into them. "Hold those up to your face. Concentrate on the smell. Listen to the sounds of the forest. Breathe in, taste the dampness of the air and the wet chill. Feel the earth beneath your feet. Feel my hand on your shoulder. Hear my voice. Exist in this moment.

"Now, listen. Don't try to remember what I tell you. Think of my words as a story. Your father died saving you."

_Shadows. The dagger. Papa vanishing. The smell of blood—_

Bae practically buried his nose in the pine needles, crushing them further with his hands to release more of their scent. The air, cold and damp; the ground beneath him, soft with moist earth and mouldering leaves. Alix's fingers digging into his shoulder like painful rocks.

"You're all right?"

Bae nodded. She went on.

"You were tricked. You thought there was a way to bring him back. And there was. But the price was a life. Your life. Keep breathing. Do you smell that in the air? The wind is coming in off the sea. That's good. The wind that comes down from the north is a killer, but this is from the east, Land of All Suns Rising we call that where I come from. A good omen, don't you think?"

"Where—where are you from?"

"Originally? The Land of All Suns Rising. Since then, Beneath the Sunset. I can't say either one did much for me. I had a lovely fortress in the middle of Nowhere for ages. The Stone, we called it. But, my brother went and broke it—we were having an argument. All right, are you ready for more? Can I go on?"

"I think so."

"Just keep breathing pine needles. Think of them tickling up your face and going up your nose. It is impossible to get trapped in the past when you're worried about pine needles going up your nose." She took a deep breath. "All right, then. Your papa came back. You were dying. Your lives were linked by the spell, the magic you'd made to get him. And your papa, well, he's your papa. He took you inside him. He joined your lives."

"The witch—she took the dagger—Papa—"

"Hush, hush. Don't think on it. One problem at a time. That witch is seven kinds of fool, and I intend to teach a lesson to each one of them, time allowing.

"You needed to be freed. But, if he freed you, you died. This was not a good thing. So, he needed to free you and let you live. Or not let you stay dead, which is not quite the same thing.

"Now, magic weaves with symbols. Magic weaves with the meanings hidden in things, not the things themselves. Your father held you inside him for the better part of a year—nine months would have been better. It always is for something like this. But, twelve months, the passing of a year, that has power of its own, too, and I could work with it.

"Think on it. How did your first life begin? You grew within your mother when you didn't have life enough of your own. She shared hers with you, shared her breath and the food she ate, shared each pulse of her heart if only because you had to hear it—by the way, I don't know about you, but I always found it so annoying the way I could never get my own pulse to match up with my mother's before I was born. The rhythms should match, even if it's two or three of my beats for each of her one. But, they never line up as neatly as that. It was the most irritating thing I remember about those days, since I didn't know people were waiting to kill me. Just goes to show, you never appreciate the good times when you have them.

"But, that's the magic of creating life, of giving enough of your own life so it can nurture two till the second is ready to be cut free. If you're not doing it the time honored way, it gets a bit tricky. I'm not saying your father couldn't have worked around that if he'd been in a better state. But, I wouldn't say he was at his best. And it really wasn't a good time or place for him to let you loose. You had the same problem I did as a baby, people waiting with big knives. Or person and big dagger.

"But, he got a message to me in the winds. I made my weaving. And I found two things he had kept safe: a hair from your head and a drop of his blood. Once the hair was joined to my weaving, that weaving became flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. Or close enough. As for blood, blood is life. There are a bunch of vampires who will write testimonials on that point. I only needed to give you a drop of your father's life to spark your own. Do you see?"

The crushed needles dug into Bae's palms as he tightened his hands around them for reasons that had nothing to do with releasing more of their scent. "You made me a new body." _Think of it as a story. _"Because my old body died."

"Not a point I meant to dwell on, but yes. You thought it would help your father and got someone else to pull you free of him. I believe he expected you to do something like it when he managed to get word to me. So, I've been busying myself running around and finding what I thought would draw your soul like your own flesh. Believe me, it's not as easy as it sounds. The real problem is you only have the memories I was able to catch for you. I think I have nearly everything that happened in the world you were born in, but just bits and patches of the rest."

"Bits and patches," Bae repeated. He imagined himself as a strange quilt. One with holes in it. "What did you do for the empty spots?"

"Ah," she gave him a sideways look, like the ones Papa sometimes gave him since the curse, when Bae saw the clues that Papa had done something terrible and asked him if it was true. Papa would look at him like that before laughing and saying it was or laughing and telling Bae not to worry about it.

_I love you, Bae._

_You're my happy ending._

"I've made a deal or three with your father in my time," Alix said. "I've seen the gold he spins. I hunted through your land for threads of it, threads he'd spun when thinking of you. Or trying not to think of you. It's much the same thing. I wove those in to cover the gaps."

Bae reached a hand to his chest, barely noticing as the pine needles fell, as if he could feel what she had done. "You used his _gold?_ That's dark magic! You—you put that _inside _of me?"

"I used your father's love," Alix said severely. "I used what he made when he thought on you or what he made when he could no longer bear the pain of thinking one you—remembering how he'd lost you. And I know how to listen to the heart that's spun into threads. Yes, he spun threads with darker thoughts and darker griefs. I didn't use those." She eyed him critically. "That gold gave his blood something to lock onto, along with the rest. Just be patient. Think of yourself as a tree that's had a few bits and pieces grafted onto you. Give yourself time for them to become part of you while you heal. You'll be whole in time."

"Why should I trust you? You're like him, aren't you?"

"Hmm, good question. I'll answer with another question: What makes you think so?"

"When I first saw you, you looked harmless, like a—a spirit. Or something. You looked kind. And good. Now—" But, he didn't know how to describe the change. Except she wasn't good. He was certain of that.

"Oh," Alix waved aside this objection. "That. When I worked on this weaving, I had to think like light and air. Air because there were some very delicate winds I had to catch. Light, because I needed to be careful of even a shred of darkness from your father's magic.

"But, now, you need an anchor. You need things strong and growing, something that gives life. I'm thinking like stone and earth, that's all.

"But, you're right, I'm not good. Not exactly. I try to be. Usually. But, succeeding? That's another story. Howevert, I gave you my name. And you know it, don't you?"

"Alecto," he breathed. "The hatred that never dies."

"Well, yes, that is one way of translating it. Alecto in legend is one of the Erinyes; the Furies; the dog-faced, snake-haired demons of vengeance. We are also called the Euminedes or kindly ones. Some will tell you this is because it's best to speak of us kindly less we become offended, as if I haven't heard it all already. But, others will say it is because we do the duty of kin and kind for those who have none. We avenge wrongs on behalf of those who are powerless to seek vengeance.

"My brother and I—"

"The Furies are supposed to be women. Sort of. And aren't there three of you?"

"It's amazing what stories get wrong. My brother and I were born to and end and to a purpose. We save what can be saved. Failing that, we avenge what has gone." She sighed. "That's why I like your father. Around most people, I'm either an overprotective mama bear—mama dragon, my brother would tell you, he's always been the saner of us two. Almost always—or I'm trying not to go psychotic killer—Oh, and don't worry, I'm strictly mama bear around you. Anyhow, your papa didn't need me to protect him. And someone who would go to the lengths he would to save his son has to work pretty hard to trigger my, er, particular type of instability. And he never went that far. Around him I was just . . . I suppose you'd call it normal. No mad impulses or drives to keep in check. Just human.

"_And_," she added, giving him another severe look. "We're _just_ friends. If I'm the mama bear and he's the papa bear, we are talking a strictly separate beds arrangement, just like the story says. Which, I suppose, makes you the baby bear. In which case, don't ask me about finding golden haired girls in your room. Besides, that ship has sailed, and I'm a bad influence on children for even bringing it up. Sorry."

"Uh. . . ." Bae had seen Papa like this, too, spinning words around people till they didn't know which way was up. He tried to think over what she'd said (except the part about girls; he was trying hard _not_ to think about that). "Papa. He let go of the dagger to hold onto me. Someone—I remember a witch. She took it. She's controlling Papa."

"Zelena. Yes."

"Are you—are you going to do anything about it?"

She gave him that sideways glance. "Your papa asked me to do two things, no more: to save you and keep you safe."

"I don't need you to keep me safe!"

"Beg to differ, but I'd wind up throwing pine needles up your nose and probably stuffing them down your throat if we rake up that much of the past. However, you didn't listen. I said your father asked two things of me. A good witch always aims to do things in threes. And a good friend doesn't wait to be asked.

"Besides, you've seen earth and you've seen air. I'd really be doing you a disservice if I didn't introduce you to fire."


	3. A Well Made Spell

"You understand?" Alix had said, handing Bae the staff.

"Yes," he assured her one more time, innocently grim and determined as only a young boy could be. Alix heart ached for him. She treasured that kind of fearless, unscarred innocence, but it had a way of melting like snow in summer when it was around her.

"No giving up or running off partway through?" she pressed.

"I understand. I won't give up and I won't run off."

And, here came the tricky part. A human—a real human—would have no doubt nervously licked her lips at this point or been fighting the urge to. Nerves made the throat and lips dry. Alix remembered a man on a suicide mission who _had_ to stop for a lemon drop to help moisten his mouth. It wasn't a problem Alix suffered from. Her tells were usually in the small ways she began to shift shape. Her tongue was already as thin and arrow-shaped as a lizard's. She could feel it in her mouth. If she licked her lips, there was no telling how long it would stretch. She wanted to let it go forked and scent the air like a snake, something she'd learned from experience discouraged trust just when she needed it.

Of course, she wasn't anxious. The feeling she had before battle was more like _hunger._

Bae didn't know that. Not yet. His innocence could be protected a little longer.

Keeping calm, keeping human, she asked the question.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

And _click._

It wasn't exactly magic—it couldn't be, under the circumstances—but Bae was the Deal-Maker's son, and Alix was . . . well, Alix. A binding, a pattern had been made.

_I will hold you to this, _Alix thought.

No need to tell him that. "Be brave," she said instead as they set off through the woods. "No matter how bad things look or how afraid you are."

She wondered if Bae would say the usual, young-boy bravado about not being afraid. She didn't really expect him to. Even without the confusion of his young-old soul, Alix thought he knew fear better than that.

She was right. Bae kept quiet.

Just as well. He was doing a bit better with his memory triggers—he'd had two nights rest, and sleep had its own power, free of magic, to help heal the mind—but she didn't know what would happen if she gave into the temptation to do a Yoda impersonation.

Alix had bound back her hair in an elegant bun, always a safer move when she could feel fire burning so close to the surface of her skin. Her clothes had changed themselves, mostly sooty black with a bolero of fiery red, all neatly and sophisticatedly tailored. As her brother said, the less human she felt, the harder she compensated. No one who wasn't obsessed with making sure people mistook her for an overly civilized human being would be tracking through these woods in high heels. Of course, no one human _could_ have hiked through these woods in these boots, not without being crippled.

She could smell the campsite as they got closer, long before Bae could, the smells of fire, roasting meat, and of men who needed better acquaintance with soap and water. She'd checked it out before, and that's all it was, a camp_site. _No shelter of any sort unless you counted trees. Really, what sort of idiots were these Merry Men? Had no one explained the concept of Maine winters? Sherwood Forest was a balmy, tropical resort by comparison, and they hadn't even built a leant-to. Why? It wasn't as if they were staying hidden. Everyone knew where they were. Anyone—any enemy—would know exactly where to find them.

She and Bae were getting close enough to hear what was being said.

"I don't want to do this," Rumplestiltskin said.

Yes, any enemy could find them.

His voice was hoarse from disuse. The smells coming off him were worse, much worse than the Merry Midden. There was filth, of course. He'd gone longer without a bath than any of Locksley's band. But, there were other odors. She knew the scents of deep earth and darkness, as if he'd been buried alive. Small brushes of sunlight may have touched him, but not much. But, then, Zelena preferred to do her worst works by night, didn't she? Darkness helped increase fear all on its own.

Alix smelled the still lingering, edgy tang of madness. Even without Bae in his mind, the scars of that were still there. So was the madness of a creature too long confined and hunger and pain—pain of the mind as well as the body. Grief like a wound. He'd seen Bae die, she thought. He hadn't seen her save him.

And she smelled Zelena.

Alix bit back the need to growl. She felt a tiny lock of hair slither free and caught it around her finger, pushing it back. That _hungry _little witch had left her scent all over him. She'd made a point of walking ahead of Bae, a shield between him and what was coming. He wouldn't see her tongue flicker out.

Yes, she could taste it in the air, the hurt of Zelena's touch, like bruises, all over Bae's father.

Alix filled her mind with cold, heavy darkness, pushing down the fires she could feel raging up inside of her.

Not the time, she reminded herself. Not the place. No killing anyone. Not yet.

Besides, the dance they'd come to join was just getting started. Robin of Locksley's little boy had just darted into the clearing.

Right. Because five year old tots could be sent off unattended through witch-haunted, monster-laden forests to gather firewood without fear of anything going wrong.

Or had someone tried to send the boy away before this little confrontation happened? Only to have him come back early?

She'd really have to ask Rumple about that later. If there was a later.

Alix watched as Rumplestiltskin grabbed the little boy with magic. She put up a hand, warning Bae not to do any of the stupid things he was thinking of. He was as tense as a wound spring, ready to go off at any moment. But, give him this, he held still.

The archer, predictably, did not. An arrow came flying out of his magical, never-missing bow (that bow was a thing of beauty, Alix thought. The bow itself—the magicless, physical reality of it—was the flawless work of a master craftsman melded perfectly with magic that had bonded to the—the _ideal_ of what that bow should be, a masterwork that never missed. She didn't think her own brother, who made a lot of things for killing, could have done better).

Alix watched the arrow fly, wondering if the Dark One was as invulnerable to weapons in this world as he'd been in his old one. It would be interesting to know. Sometimes, things like that changed from world to world. He'd been awfully hard to damage when he was in _her_ world, she knew that.

Not that it mattered. The archer should have thought this through. Rumplestiltskin had faced this weapon before, albeit in a different form.

The past shapes and changes the present. Rumplestiltskin had touched this weapon's magic. He knew the shape and form of it better than Alix, who was only admiring from a distance.

The arrow would not miss its target.

But, the target could be changed.

_Elegant,_ Alix thought. She had always admired Rumplestiltskin's handiwork, his neatness and—and _style._

She admired his dress sense, too. He never felt the overwhelming need she did to appear human, quite the opposite. He'd worn dragonskin leathers complete with scales and form-fitting jackets that had spikes instead of ruffles. Even now, in his ruined business suit, even when he didn't want to be here, didn't want (she could smell his agony) to be threatening a child, his rags radiated darkness and power.

Well, so could she.

Too bad for Bae.

Alix stepped into view, just a few feet from the little boy, Roland (a loose thread of past brushed against a stray strand of Alix' hair, flickering against her senses. _A woman, Marian, pale-faced and exhausted from childbirth, whispering her son's name to the archer before she fell into exhausted sleep—and telling him why he must use that name_. Interesting. Just not important. For now). "Hello, Rumple."

He looked at her, startled. His hold on the arrow weakened just a fraction, letting her grab the spell away from him. Smiling, she asked, "How about we change the target again?"

The arrow came straight at her. Alix stepped out of the way, letting it sail past. She grabbed it with another spell before it hit Baelfire.

She saw the blood drain from the Dark One's face. "Bae?"

Bae's eyes flickered from the arrow to his father and back again. "Papa?" She hadn't told him this part was coming.

"Hush, Bae," Alix said. "You made me a promise. Rumple, don't you like the gift I've brought you? You have no idea how much work it was to find. You're _horribly _hard to shop for."

Rumple shook his head. "No. He's dead. I was with him when he died."

"Really? As the mighty sorcerer, Miracle Max—yes, I know he's just a story, but aren't we all?—put it, 'There's different kinds of dead: there's sort of dead, mostly dead, and all dead.' I'll let you work out which you saw."

Despite his want of scales, Rumplestiltskin's eyes in this world could still be the eyes of the Dark One, she saw, burning with something not at all human. How nice.

His voice jagged and broken (how long had it been since he'd spoken with anyone?), Rumplestiltskin said, "Don't mock me."

"Nicely emoted, Rumple. I shall have to try to remember the way you said that. Your words sound like broken glass. I half-expect them to cut you on the way out. Well done indeed. Though you might have tried to keep up the Princess Bride theme. You could have said, 'Don't mock my pain.' And I could have said, 'Life is pain. Anyone who says different is selling something.' Though, I rather think you know that already, don't you?"

"Papa. . . ." Bae said, his eyes on the arrow.

"I'm going to let go of the arrow, Rumple. Do you think you can keep it from hitting him? Here we go—"

The arrow flew towards Bae, stopping only inches from him. Alix felt the tug as Rumplestiltskin pulled it back. When it was not quite two feet from Bae, Alix caught it again. "Oh, no, old friend, _no_. That's not how the game's played. Just so you understand, you can't win. You see how it works, don't you? I'm only helping the arrow do what it already wants to do. You're trying to change it. Normally, I'd bet on you in a fight. Really, I would. But, I think I hold the winning hand."

"Why?" Rumplestiltskin said. "Why save Bae only to kill him?"

"Hmm, good question. Because I'm insane? Not really a good answer, is it? Because I'm stopping you? And you want to be stopped. More than you want your son to live? Because he was willing to die to see that happen. Three times, if you think about it. When he risked the vortex, when he died to give you the chance to fight . . . what is her name again? Zebra? Zippity? Zippity-Doo-Dah?"

"Zelena," Rumplestiltskin said, still holding back the arrow. "Her name is Zelena."

"No, that can't be right. Ziolent, maybe? Rhymes with violent. That suits her. No, wait! I've got it! Soylent! I shall call her Soylent. Rhymes with toilent, which also suits. Soylent Green. You didn't eat her meat pie, did you? Who was it, anyway?"

"Stop the arrow, Alecto."

"No. There's only one way to stop it from hitting its target, and you know it."

"Alecto. . . ."

"I am doing what you want. Don't deny it. That witch's heart is a tomb, full of dead men's bones and rotting meat. You don't want her to win this round any more than I do. And you don't want that child, Roland, to die. This, to use the local parlance, is win-win."

"_Let Bae go!_"

"And let you kill Roland? Do you know how the boy got his name? It's not after his father. The boy's mother, Marian, she wanted a name that sounded a bit like you, and no one can actually name a child Rumplestiltskin in your world. It's worse than Soylent Green is in this one." All right, that thread of past had been useful. "Marian did it because, you were the reason she lived long enough to have her son." She felt another lock of hair break free, hissing, like rain on fire. "And you are the reason he's growing up with a father." Another lock slipped out. Rumplestiltskin had better do his part soon. It was never _good _to be around her once she started letting people die. She hoped Rumplestiltskin remembered that.

"You know what to do, Rumple. Though, you might want to look at the spell on the arrow. Baelfire isn't the target. It's the staff he holds. But, he promised me not to let go of it. And you know I can hold him to his promise. I give you an oath of my own. If that arrow touches that staff while it's in his hands, it will be the same as if it struck Bae. But, that gives you a better target, and you might—"

Rumplestiltskin vanished, reappearing in front of Bae.

_Elegant, _she thought again as Rumplestiltskin ripped the staff out of his son's hands and whirled around. With the strength and speed of the Dark One, getting the staff in front of him in time to catch the arrow instead of letting the arrow go through his chest on its way to the staff was child's play.

Alix thought _fire_ at the arrow, as more hair slipped free. Her hair moved like a flame, like a blind worm, strands of fire opening like a too large mouth and hissing at Locksley, who was stepping towards both of them, crossbow at the ready.

Rumplestiltskin was staring at the staff. "Alecto, what did you do?"

"Found a solution. I hope. You see what I did?"

He glanced upwards, where things with wings might be listening (she remembered the lines of a poem, _There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops/ None know the horror of its sight/ Save those who meet death in the wilderness._ . . .). Then, he looked at Locksley. Right. Too many listeners, Zelena's pawns and talkative, idiot outlaws. "You . . . wove a pattern," Rumplestiltskin said.

Alix nodded. Patterns were how she thought of magic. The pattern of fire. The patterns of flesh and bone. She looked at the Merry Men. No reason to explain to them. And no reason to explain to any Soylent Greens who might be listening. "What you were before, the weakness and the strength. The strength that pushed you for centuries. The place it pushed you to. The son that was the reason for it all by blood and choice. All that in your hand."

Rumplestiltskin understood what she was saying, but the band of men too dumb to buy a winter weather tent from the local store stared blankly. Oh, yay.

The man Rumplestiltskin had been before: magicless, powerless. He had to walk with that staff because the only way he could protect his son from growing up fatherless was to cripple himself. That staff was the symbol of that physical weakness and of the strength of his love for his son. That love had pushed him for centuries to reach the Land Without Magic and the son who, by his own choice, belonged to the land beyond Storybrooke's borders—the son who, by his choice, had kept a death's grip on that staff to save his father.

And his father had completed the pattern by taking back his staff to save his son.

That was what she'd woven into the staff. So long as he had it, it was as if he stood in the Land Without Magic. The dagger had no power over him.

His orders were to do whatever was necessary to get the heart. If he'd known what the staff did, he couldn't have taken it. If she'd just been threatening Bae, Zelena's orders could force him to stand aside. That's why she had to shift any threat he made on the Merry Mad Men to Bae, interfering with what she-of-the-moldering-skin wanted. It was the only way to be sure he had the power to fight.

"That was . . . clever," Rumplestiltskin said. He was shaken. Alix expected he was still waiting for the dagger to pull him away, to make him start slaughtering everyone, including Bae. His hands were white knuckled around his staff.

"Clever? _Clever?_ That was _brilliant_. No one has a higher opinion of my abilities than me, and I am _in awe_ over what I've done."

"You haven't," Rumplestiltskin said. "Not yet. Not till Zelena's defeated."

"Right. Well, have _you _got a clever plan for that? Or should we go for the direct approach, make her into a meat pie. Or green crackers. We could serve her up with apples and cheese."

"I thought you were on the wagon?"

"For this, I'd fall off. Or we could just burn her alive. And scatter the ashes. Over some place we don't care about too much." She sighed. "I _like_ burning things."

Rumplestiltskin looked at his staff, thinking no doubt complicated things. "Snow White's child hasn't been born yet. Zelena has lost two of the three remaining things she needed, her sister's heart and me. That leaves one." His eyes were only human, now, and would be so long as the staff protected him, but they still burned. "She's about to find out that people who rely on someone else's courage and none of their own come to regret it. Badly."

"Come on, Alecto," he said. "If we're going to kill her, we need to get a move on."


	4. Zelena Dreams

**Note: This was an interlude I wrote that I couldn't resist including. **

_The night before._

Zelena dreamed.

It was night, the moon was only a pale crescent of light, but the forest was lit by a bonfire of autumn leaves. The figure of a woman, cloaked and hooded in velvet black, swirled in a slow dance around the flames. Black hair slipped out of her hood and pale fragments of her face could be glimpsed now and then as she moved. Bone white hands gripped her fiddle and her bow as she played, dancing to the music.

_When in the springtime of the year  
When the trees are crowned with leaves  
When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew  
Are dressed in ribbons fair_

Zelena saw the leaves—autumn leaves, dried and withered despite the words of the song—in the bonfire and lying beyond beneath the trees. The wind blew, making all of them, burning or not, twirl and tumble in rings. The woman's dance led her away from the fire and into the darkness of the forest as the leaves and sparks, whirling about in circles, skittered around her.

They were sorting themselves, Zelena saw, yew leaves gathering in on spot, ash in another, birch and oak all separate. As she watched, Zelena saw some of them rise and tumble, no longer in rings but in the shapes of things a little like dancing men as leaves blew in and out.

The dancer, no longer having a bonfire, danced and spun through the trees. The leaves and fire danced after her till she passed by a dead tree with an owl's nest on top of it. Dead bones were scattered beneath. The trees stretched and moved in the silent wind, the shadows of their branches reaching across the earth, like long, bony hands. The wind caught up the dead, dried bones and the cast off feathers and dried bits of beak, lifting them up like dust or ashes._  
_  
_When owls call the breathless moon  
In the blue veil of the night,  
The shadows of the trees appear  
Amidst the lantern light._

The long, bone-fingered shadows crawled after the fiddler and the bones and bits of feathers and beak became another, ghostly dancer. She saw something else. The strange cavalcade seemed to cast off bits and pieces, one after the other, their sheddings forming a ring, a garland passed from one dancer to another, bits of leaf and bone tangled together. Flame, leaves, feather, and bone were all joined in a crown._  
_  
_We've been rambling all the night  
And some time of this day.  
Now returning back again  
We bring a garland gay.  
_  
_Who will go down to those shady groves  
And summon the shadows there?  
And tie a ribbon on those sheltering arms  
In the springtime of the year?_

The fiddler had reached a grove. Zelena did not recognize it. She could not say from which of the three worlds she had travelled it belonged. Yet, she knew it. Fear choked her as she watched the demon band merrily spin and tumble their way in.

Something in her knew: this was a place of darkness. It was _wrong_ for light to be there. It gave life to things that should never be touched by it.

By the light of the swirling flames, Zelena saw the dead bones of men and women who had died in this place, tattered clothes hanging on skeletons like ribbons. She knew, as if she had seen it, how they had died, tumbling into the shadows and being trapped, unable to find their way out. No one had heard their screams as they faced whatever fears found them. Some ran in circles till exhaustion and hunger took them. Some had been choked to death on their own terror. Some of them had even known what they faced, the darkness of their own souls. It hadn't been enough to save them.

Shadows slithered out between the trees. Not like the bony tree shapes, these were smooth as the surface of a still lake. Odd, pale lights moved among them, difficult to glimpse. They might have been moonlight. They might have been bones.

The songs of birds seem to fill the wood  
That when the fiddler plays  
All their voices can be heard  
Long past their woodland days.

Black crows and white owls flew about them. They moved, now, up a hill and out of the trees towards a light. Zelena could make out the fiddler, now. The hands, long and lean, were bones. The face hidden within the black hair was a grinning skull. Then, Zelena saw where they were. They had reached the field where her house stood._  
_  
_And so they linked their hands and danced  
Round in circles and in rows.  
And so the journey of the night descends  
When all the shades are gone._

There was an army of them. They formed two circles around her house, one clockwise, one widdershins, weaving in and out among each other as they sped around the farmhouse. The fiddler still stood apart, playing

_A garland gay we bring you here  
And at your door we stand.  
It is a sprout well budded out  
The work of Our Lord's hand. _

They had kept the garland, passing it from one hand to another through the mad dance. Now, it came back to the fiddler. She put her instrument and bow on the ground and took the wreath, black and burning, in her hands as she went to the door of Zelena's house and hung it there.

Black wreath. In three worlds, that meant a house in mourning, a house where death had touched.

The fiddler stood back taking up her violin again. Before playing, she looked up and, grinning, met Zelena's eyes. She lifted up her the bow, still smiling, and—

Zelena woke, heart pounding. She pulled out the dagger. "Dark One, I summon thee. Dark One, _I summon thee!_"

Rumplestiltskin appeared. He stiffened slightly, seeing Zelena had summoned him into her bedroom; but she didn't have time for that. "There's something," she told him. "Out there—out in the forest—watching the house—find it!"

His eyes narrowed, studying her, but he obeyed.

Zelena sat shivering. She realized music was still playing and looked over by the side of the bed. The radio was on.

That was it, she told herself. A nightmare from music. She must have turned it on by accident, perhaps reaching out, perhaps a brush of magic in her sleep.

When Rumplestiltskin came back and told her he had found nothing, no watchers in the woods and no signs there had been any, she nodded and accepted it, sending him back to his cage.

She had not asked questions which Rumplestiltskin, ancient wizard that he was, might have answered. She had not asked about the music or the dream and the things she saw dancing in it.

If the wind blew a scrap of rotting cloth, ribbonlike, against the tree outside her window, what of it? It was no more important than the ashes, shadow dark, blowing in the wind and circling her home.

No more important than the white glow of moonlight, mixing with the shadows of the trees, to make an image like a skull, pressed against the window of Zelena's room, watching.

Deep in the forest, polishing a walking staff as Bae checked the meat roasting over the fire, Alix felt the threads she had sent out reaching their target and smiled.

X

Note: The song is Loreena Mckennitt's _Mummer's Dance_


	5. Remembrance

At first, Belle thought the woman kneeling down to pick up flowers from a bottom shelf in The Game of Thorns flower shop was Emma. The red jacket was exactly the same, although she'd never seen Emma with her hair pulled back in a braid. Or buying flowers. Then, the woman stood up, and Belle could see she was shorter than the sheriff, only a little taller than Belle herself. But, her clothes, from the leather boots to the tank top, were exactly like Emma's except for being black. The flowers she had picked up were scarlet poppies, a mourner's bouquet. Lacey knew them as the flowers people in Australia and the UK used on Remembrance Day, the day to honor those fallen in war.

Neal, she thought. Neal had been the only recent death—the only confirmed one, though there were plenty of missing—in this war with Zelena. Belle wondered if this was a friend of his, though she hadn't seen her at the funeral. Walking towards the counter, Belle saw her father. He looked up at her, afraid.

Then, another figure, leaning on a staff and half-hidden behind a display of hanging plants, stepped out and looked at her.

Belle's heart was in her throat.

"No," she whispered. "_No._" It couldn't be. It _couldn't _be. "Rumple?"

"Belle—"

She didn't hear what else he had to say as she ran into his arms.

X

Alix felt an unexpected pang as she saw the expression on Rumplestiltskin's face change when he saw the woman. It had been one of the threads she'd caught at the Dark One's tomb, a memory of Baelfire's. This was the woman with him, the woman Zelena had ordered Rumplestiltskin to kill.

She remembered her brother's face when he was finally reunited with his wife. It had been like this—or it had been if you had as many eons experience as Alix did reading her brother's expressions. To anyone else, it wasn't _quite_ the usual stone slab imitation he normally did. It might even have been considered _warm._

Rumplestiltskin was about as different from her brother as a living being could be. There were _earthworms _that had more in common with her dear sibling than Rumplestiltskin (the natural inexpressiveness, for one thing). Right then, the difference between them didn't matter. She felt her fury at Zelena ratchet up a notch.

Water. Alix tried to think of water, cold and unmoving, always calm. Even when it kills. The peacefulness of drowning. The gentle sleep of killing cold. . . .

_Not helping, _Alix told herself.

This is why she doesn't travel. Home anchors her, keeps her sane. Saner. This is why she wove a nightmare or three to send after Zelena. Let the witch be edgy, afraid. Let _her_ emotions keep her off balance. Alix wouldn't—_couldn't_—be stupid enough to fall into the same trap.

Besides, it wasn't a trap so much in her case as an apocalypse waiting to happen.

She thought of her father saying they should kill her the day she was born. The memory calmed her anger. Hard to hold onto moral outrage when you remembered exactly where you were on the abominations scale.

He'd been a wise man. Would things have been better if they'd listened to him? They couldn't have been worse. Not for him. Not for everyone else in their homeland. Except her brother. Would he have still survived without her? Would he have had more time to grow into his power, to set things right? That had to be the greatest irony of all, she thought. Being born to save the world and managing it—just a little too late.

There were all kinds of irony in her dressing like the Savior. Emma Swan, after all, had shown up _on time._

Meanwhile, the woman (Belle, her name was Belle) had emerged enough from Rumplestiltskin's embrace to look around her. She stiffened slightly as she took in Alix.

"You," she said. "Are you—"

Alix gave a little wave. "Hi," she said, forcing a bright smile. "Not Zelena in disguise." Hey, it was the sensible deduction, and Belle was _smart._ Zelena was a shapechanger (not bad, in a technical way, but really lacking the _substance _of the art). Subtle mockery of the town Savior was probably outside her range of humor—that was more the pull-wings-off-flies variety (and she thought she was hilarious)—but who else would be with Rumplestiltskin right now? It was why even the florist had been expecting them to turn him into a flying monkey. Or worse. "Not Zelena's minion, associate, flunky, subcontractor, or anything else that could be even vaguely construed as working with her, for her, or in any way that promotes her interests. I'm Alecto. But, please, call me Alix."

Alix hadn't expected her little speech to convince Belle (after all, what else would Zelena or one of her flunkies have said?), but the dark-haired woman looked at her thoughtfully. "Alecto. The Weaving Woman. Lady of the Unbounded Realm. That's you?"

"You've heard of me?"

"You were in one of Rumple's books, and he—" That was when she noticed Bae. Her eyes widened. "_Baelfire?_" Belle looked at Rumplestiltskin, unbelieving. "That's Baelfire? How?"

Alix hissed a spell under her breath and traced a design of fire in the air. It floated towards Belle and dissolved harmlessly against her. Rumplestiltskin glared at Alix. "Of course, she's the real Belle," he said. "What did you think?"

Alix shrugged, unrepentant. "That if I could be Zelena, she could be, too? Don't look at me like that. I don't run into many sensible people. It's unnerving. And how'd she recognize your son?"

"I saw his picture," Belle said. "A sketch made when he was about this age." She turned her attention back to Rumplestiltskin. "How is this possible? Neal died."

"Sort of died," Alix said. "How often do I have to explain this? _Sort of _died."

And that was when five other people came bursting into the shop. "Moe!" said the blond one (who was dressed exactly like Alix except for using more color. That would be Emma. The dark-haired, very pregnant one would be Snow (how had she managed to run in that condition? She remembered when her nephew had been trying to save a pregnant woman years ago when he was first coming into his powers. The lady hadn't been able to run nearly this fast, and their pursuers had caught up with them. Her poor nephew. The kid hadn't even begun to get a grip on the family gifts. He'd been _traumatized _by what he did to those guys). The meant the other woman would be Regina. The lighter haired man would David-James-Charming, and the darker haired man would be Hook (not that his hand didn't give it away). "We got your text, Moe. What—"

That was when the explosions started outside. Alix, holding tight to the poppies, ran out. "I'll pay you later!" she called over her shoulder to the florist as she pushed the newcomers aside and hurried outside, Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire bringing up the rear.


	6. Frail Flowers

Belle remembered the shocked moment when she'd woken up on a woodland path, walking behind a man she hadn't recognized a heartbeat before but who she now knew was Rumplestiltskin, the one she loved.

Waking up, she thought, the mad feeling of waking up _inside _a dream. The world that had been nothing for as long as she could remember except dark walls and a pair of cold eyes staring at her through a grate, had opened up to an alien, unfamiliar world of deserted streets and empty buildings—empty except for one, the one she had been told to find with the stranger who had protected her.

A stranger who had held her as though she were the most valuable thing in the world, who had led her through the cold, ghost-like streets, made of stone as silent as the walls of her cell, to paths of earth that ran between grass and trees. They had walked upwards as the slow light of dawn rose to meet them, walking towards the smell of clean water.

And she had remembered.

In the end, it had seemed only right that their journey ended at the top of that hill, at the well that waited for the gift of magic that would allow the return of lost things to this world. Going back to the town, seeing the once empty streets filled with crowds of men and women rushing back and forth, calling for family, embracing them as though they hadn't seen them in years, it was as though Rumple's magic had conjured them into being, freeing them from their spell.

She knew even then it wasn't so. The streets had been empty in the silence before dawn. The spell that had held them had been broken by another hand as they walked up that hill. But, like the people around her, finding lost loves and forgotten children, she hadn't had words for how impossible and wonderful the world had become.

It was the same feeling she had now.

Rumple stood there, in her father's store, free of Zelena. He was tired and ragged. As she rushed to him, she could smell the damp earth of the cage Zelena had kept him in and sour sweat. There was rough stubble on his face as she pressed against him. But, he was free. She could see it the moment his eyes met hers, had seen it in his eyes as they met hers, lighting up with hope and unafraid.

And, then she saw the woman with him, looking almost like a mockery of Emma. There was something in her gaze, like a serpent or a cat. Belle could almost feel herself being weighed: _predator or prey? _

Zelena? Belle was certain—almost certain—Zelena would be ordering Rumplestiltskin to kill her if they were all three in the same room, mocking Belle with her powerlessness. That careful, considering was nothing she could imagine in the witch of the west. But, who else would be casually picking out flowers while the Dark One stood beside her?

Then, the woman gave her name: Alecto.

Belle had read about her, a creature almost as fabulous as Rumplestiltskin. Legend said she came from a realm that lay at a crossroads between many others. Just not to the one Rumplestiltskin had wanted to enter, so he had told her.

But, here she was.

And here was Bae, a child again, but obviously Rumplestiltskin's son.

And, before Belle could try to understand these mysteries, Emma and her family came charging in, followed by explosions out in the street. Belle barely had enough time to register what Emma said to Maurice, "We got your text," before she was running out with the rest of them.

_We got your text._

Her father had seen Rumplestiltskin and called Emma, not her.

_He didn't know, _she told herself. He didn't know if Rumple was still under Zelena's control. He didn't know who the woman and boy with him were. Belle, remembering some of the stories she'd read about the younger of the Demon Twins, wasn't sure he would have called her if he had—or if he should have.

_Capricious, _the book had said, _kind and cruel by turns. Like the Harvest Mother, she may defend the lands she guards or burn them to stubble according to seasons only she regards. _

"Oh, don't believe everything you read," Rumplestiltskin had said when he found her looking through that one. "Alix isn't as bad as all that. Usually."

"You _know _her?" Belle had asked, gaping.

"Don't leave your mouth hanging open like that, dearie, there's no telling what may crawl in. Alecto and I have done a deal or two. Her problem, if you want to call it that, is that she has all the instincts of a starving, half-mad cave bear protecting her cubs mixed in with some vague ideas about being a nice person. It gets confusing for her."

Belle had tried to picture this. "And what does she think about you?"

"Oh," Rumple said airily. "She thinks of me about the same way a tiger regards a tree, I suppose. She doesn't like vegetables, so we might as well get along. She'll tell you I'm not boring to talk to which, with Alix, is about the highest compliment there is. I suppose I can say the same for her."

"She thinks you're a talking tree?"

"More or less. And she appreciates good spinning."

Now, the legendary, ravening mother bear/nice person stood on the streets of Storybrooke, a bundle of poppies in her hands, watching seven Dwarves fight off flying monkeys. That was the source of the explosions. Dopey and Happy were shooting fireworks at them.

"They don't want to kill them," Rumplestiltskin said. "They're trying to disorient them instead."

Alix nodded. "Not a bad idea, so long as supplies last." She looked down at the flowers in her hands and smiled. "I think I have a better one." There was a quirk to her smile like Rumple's when he was enjoying a joke he didn't expect anyone else could get. She spoke softly to the blossoms, like a mother lulling a child to sleep. "Attractive to the eye but soothing to the smell. . . . Fly, my pretties, fly!"

The scarlet petals scattered as if a strong wind had seized them. They swirled upwards in dizzying circles, like the whirligig seeds of maples, red clouds of them, more than Belle's father's entire store could have held, their gold hearts glinting in the sun, as bright as any thread Rumplestiltskin had ever spun.

They blew round the winged beasts, who swatted at them. The flowers fell away, like flies buzzing to safety, before drifting back. The apes (it was impossible for Belle to think of them as _monkeys_, no matter what the stories said) clawed at them again, but not as quickly as before.

Belle watched the flowers retreat and return, then watched the apes' wings slow as they began to spiral downward. They landed on the street, one by one. They would each look around drunkenly for a moment, as if trying to remember what they should be doing, before curling up on the ground and falling asleep. Fiery petals blanketed them. _Like red snow_, Belle thought, uneasy at how effortlessly this woman (except she wasn't a woman, was she? Not if the stories were true) had brought down Zelena's army.

Alix handed Belle the small bowl that had held the flowers and now held their barren stems. "Belle, isn't it?" she said. "Be a dear and hold this for me, would you? I think I may need to keep my hands free. And, have you seen the Wizard of Oz? Or read the book? If the petals start to fade or the monkeys start to wake up, just think of the flowers from the story, a burning carpet of them. Think of them putting the flying monkeys to sleep. Hold that image in your mind." Her smile turned feral, showing sharp teeth. "I always did like flowers. They _seem _so helpless and frail."

Belle recognized that line. "That's what the Cowardly Lion said. I don't suppose you have an army of mice handy for when we need to move them out of here?" That was from the book, too, the mice dragging the Cowardly Lion out of the poppy field.

"If this works, we won't need to. If it doesn't, they're Zelena's problem."

"She shouldn't be here," Rumplestiltskin said. "Belle, you should go. Find somewhere safe. Take Bae—"

"I'm not leaving, Papa," Bae said.

"I'm not either, Rumple," Belle said. "Besides, where's safe, so long as Zelena's running around?"

"Belle—" he pleaded.

She might have given in just because of the grief in his eyes, it was the same way he had looked at her when they had almost freed him from Zelena's cage and he had felt Zelena returning. She remembered the raw fear in his voice when he warned them—warned her—that Zelena would make him kill them if they attempted that again.

"Too late," Alix said. She sounded cheerful, but Belle saw the strain around her eyes. "The party's started."

Zelena was flying towards them on her broomstick. The few flowers that timidly tried to approach her burst into flames.

"_Oh,_" Alix's eyes lit up. "This ought to be _good._"


	7. Ice and Fire

Zelena's hand tightened around the dagger. "Dark One," she whispered. "I summon thee." She waited.

Nothing.

She gripped harder, knuckles whitening. "Dark One, _I summon thee!_"

Angrily, she thrust the dagger back into its sheath and glared at the monkey who had brought the report. "Summon the others and show me where Rumplestiltskin has gone." Without waiting to see if she was obeyed, she went to fetch her broom, thinking over what she'd been told. A witch and a boy had somehow freed Rumplestiltskin from the dagger's control. It wasn't possible! Or it shouldn't be.

But, what made Zelena seethe was that, whoever this woman was, Rumplestiltskin had left with her. Another trollop, another pretty face trying to dazzle the Dark One with whatever pathetic talents she had. Why? What was _wrong _with him? Belle was bad enough. Zelena had heard her talking in Rumplestiltskin's castle. "I love him," the little tart had said. "All of him. Even the parts that belong to the darkness."

_Even_ the parts that belong to the darkness! The little princess must have nearly broken her arm, patting herself on the back for that one, as if it were an accomplishment to love Dark One for what he truly was.

If only _Belle _had taken the key to the vault. If only it had been _her _life lost to bring Rumplestiltskin back to life. He would have still had his precious son and he would finally have been rid of that sanctimonious little chit.

She'd told herself it didn't matter. Oh, Baelfire would die, but her spell could change that—or could change that if she wanted it to.

Zelena imagined the look on Rumplestiltskin's face when _she _saved his son, when _she _brought Baelfire back to him. She would be a princess in this new world she created. Her mother would marry King Leopold. He would raise Zelena as his daughter. There would never even be a Regina.

As for Belle, whatever had amused Rumplestiltskin in having a dainty, little noblewoman cook and scrub for him would be forgotten when a royal princess declared her love for the sorcerer. He would finally, _finally _see that she was the one meant to be with him. Working together, they could rule their entire world, she thought, immortal emperor and empress. He would look in her eyes and she would be his happily ever after, his everything.

Happy ending. Rumplestiltskin had called that maggoty son of his that. But, surely, he would see the truth once the world finally went the way it should have all along. And, really, what did he even need the brat for? What was Baelfire's mother except a pirate's lightskirt? For all Rumplestiltskin knew, the boy wasn't even his.

She'd be doing him a favor, Zelena thought, to make him forget the little worm ever existed. After three hundred years of Rumplestiltskin desperately searching for him, the squirming larva had practically slammed the door in his father's face, not willing to listen to anything he had to say. He wouldn't even use the name Rumplestiltskin had given him. There were spells, she thought, spells for memory. She would take away this pain, she told herself, she would make him forget the ungrateful brat had ever been born. Then, they could finally be happy together, the way they were meant to be.

X

Rumplestiltskin had a death grip on his staff, knowing what would happen if he lost it. He tried to stand between Bae and what he could see coming. Meanwhile, he saw Miss Swan drawing her gun.

"Wait," he told her.

Miss Swan looked at him as though he were insane. Still insane. But, before she could make whatever snide comment she was no doubt trying to come up with, Alix' flowers took flight.

Patterns. That was how Alix' magic worked. Millions of people in this world knew what was supposed to happen when the Wicked Witch and poppies met up, and that created a momentum Alix could draw on.

It also created weaknesses, dozens of weaknesses. Zelena wasn't her sister. Regina had always been bored with subtlety, with understanding the nuances and balance of a spell, happily substituting power for nuance. Oh, Zelena was much the same. But, she _could_ be subtle when needed to be. She _could _take the time to think and plot rather than just charge ahead. That was how she'd tricked Bae into bringing him back in the first place. If she realized what Alix was doing, if she stopped and thought about how those patterns could be changed to work for her. . . .

But, Zelena only looked around at her fallen army with distaste, not that she seemed to mind the loss. They'd been a tool to her, something to do the dirty work so she could keep her hands clean, not a weapon. The flowers that came towards her burst into flames, but the ones around her minions remained untouched.

Round one to them.

Zelena ignored the Savior, her sister, and everyone else gathering around, concentrating on Rumplestiltskin. "What are you doing, slave?" she asked. "I thought I'd broken you of playing with trollops."

_Broken him._

Rumplestiltskin's jaw clenched, remembering the times she'd said that, the times she'd ordered him out of the cage, commanding him to fulfill her warped fantasies while telling him over and over again how much better this was than anything Belle could offer him.

"They say beasts need to be trained," she'd told him, standing so close her tongue flicked against his ear, warm and damp as she whispered to him. "Beasts with bad habits need to be broken." And that's what she did. Tried to do. He didn't know which anymore.

He held the staff between them. "Stay back, Zelena."

"What is she?" Zelena sneered as she glanced at Alix. "Another witch you trained? Another failure? She obviously wasn't good enough for what you needed, to cast your curse, but _that's _what you go running back to the moment my back's turned."

Alix rolled her eyes. "Sweet mother, you're tiresome, aren't you?" She switched to a bored, lecturing tone. "You control his powers, physical and magical, because of that bloody knife. It doesn't care if it's his true love or a lump of nose-snot holding it." She smiled sweetly. "It doesn't even care if you're a failure he rejected. But, it doesn't give you his heart or his soul. Honestly, haven't you ever read an instruction manual? This isn't rocket science."

"Who are you?" Zelena said. "Some little witch he promised to train? A fallen fairy begging him for favors?" Rumplestiltskin almost choked on that one. "You're not important, whatever you think. Go away and I'll let you live. You're not worth the trouble of tracking down."

"Ooo, are you promising a _cat-fight_ if I stick around? I bet all the boys in Storybrooke are pulling out their smart phones to record it as we speak." Her pleasant, mocking expression changed. Alix snarled like a beast, showing her teeth. "By rights, you're _his_ kill. He owns your blood, as far as I'm concerned. I guess I'll have to apologize for stealing it."

Zelena smiled. "Will you?" she asked and threw a wall of fire at Alix.

X

_Not good_, Alix thought as the wave of fire hit her. She'd meant to distract Zelena but she'd really been hoping for something other than fire as an opening attack. Fire was Alix element. Air, Earth, they steadied her. Fire sang in her blood, begging for more. . . .

She drank it in, standing in the center of the inferno, unharmed. She heard the flames whispering to her, demanding to be fed_._ Fire was the great hunger. It would devour the world if it was left free to do it.

_So easy_, she thought, _to do just that._

_No, I am more than the instincts that shape me. I am what I choose to be. And I do not choose to be destruction._

She felt her hair coming loose, felt it mingling with the flames.

She breathed, thinking of pine-scented air, of salt-winds from the sea, the damp smell of earth blanketed with autumn leaves, the harder scents of sand and stone, trying to steady her mind.

_I am the weaving woman. I catch the echoes of the past in my webs and my hair itself is a net. _

This fire, it wasn't just destruction or magic or flame. Or it was all those things, but conjured by Zelena's mad rage. That was why it found its echo so quickly inside her. Devouring hunger, that was close to the core of what Alix was, much as she tried to hold it back from her soul's heart. It was always there, trying to find its way in.

It lived inside Zelena, too, she thought, and it had eaten her from the inside out. That was what she had conjured this out of.

_What will I catch in my threads, Zelena, now you have given me the fires of your heart?_

X

Belle watched Alix rush into the flames and saw them gather around her. She crouched like a cat in its heart, a figure made of fire, the white-gold hidden in the red petals center. Belle saw her hair stream out, writhing like serpents. She heard the flames hiss.

Then, she saw them change.

Figures appeared in the flames, faces writhing in torment. Men, women, children. Belle saw the man she recognized as Little John as he screamed in the hospital before transforming into a winged ape. She saw Bae dying by the Vault of the Dark One. She saw herself, weeping as she reached out to Rumplestiltskin in his cage. Philip and his princess, Aurora, were changed into beasts. They were distorted and twisted by the dancing flames, but Belle could name them all.

But, strangers also began to appear. A girl screaming by a well, horrified by some nightmare only she could see. A great city rose against an unfamiliar sky. A man was struck down, crying out in fear as he was changed into what Belle somehow knew was the first of Zelena's flying soldiers.

A woman with a kind face was gathering herbs by the riverside when she looked up to speak to someone beside her. Her face changed to shock, then horror as a spell struck her into the water. She reached out to someone, crying desperately for help as she drowned.

A man, tense with fear, opened a door. Unlike the woman, there was no surprise in his face as his heart was torn out of him.

It was an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of pain, of death. There were dozens—no, _hundreds _of them, distorted by pain, fear, death.

Rumple could see the future.

Alecto could see the past.

Belle knew this. But, it wasn't till she saw Rumple, scaled and madly spinning away, that she understood.

These were the images of Zelena's past. These were the people she had tortured and killed.

X

Names and faces flitted past Alix. She caught strands of names and stories. A creature or fire, not unlike her, betrayed Belle and Baelfire, before doing what he could to save them. She saw Bae once again lying in the snow, the brand burned into his hand as the life was torn from him and his father was restored.

Anger, pain, _revenge_ clawed through her, demanding she give it its due.

Alix gritted her teeth. No. Fire did not command her. _No one _commanded her. She was Erinye. She was the hatred that never dies. Whole kingdoms had fallen to her in her infancy. _She _commanded the flames, no one else—certainly not this madwoman or her crimes.

Alix reached out to the echoes of pain around her, weaving their threads into the bits and pieces of nightmare she had let creep into Zelena's house these past nights.

They swirled around her, taking form, congealing. Owl bones made of flame, burning leaves, fiery shadows spun to life around her, their faces woven into the forms of Zelena's fears, the many victims she had struck down. Alix stood up. Shakily (but only a _little _shakily) she stepped out of the flames (her hair, uncooperative as always, still hissed like fire in the rain, some of the ends shaping themselves into burning serpent-heads. Candle-flame fangs snapped at the air).

X

Belle watched the army of burning sticks and bones form around Alecto. She gripped the bowl tight, not sure if she shouldn't be trying to defend Storybrooke from them as well as Zelena. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't," Rumplestiltskin told her.

Emma was the one who said what Belle was beginning to wonder. "Gold, what is she? And can we trust her? And how come Zelena isn't controlling you?"

"I have a . . . temporary respite. It may or may not last, depending on how this fight goes. As for Alix, I didn't ask her here to fight for me. She's. . . ." he hesitated. "She's not always sane. And this may bring out the worst in her."

"Didn't—so what _did _you bring her here for?"

"To save Bae."

"To save—" That was when Emma saw the teenaged boy standing by Rumplestiltskin, white-faced, his hand clenched tight around a small pouch he wore on a cord around his neck. Emma looked at Rumplestiltskin. "He's not—he isn't—"

That was when the ground exploded, holes being shot through the road as waterlines broke, geysering their contents up into the street.

Belle's hands clenched around the bowl of poppies, telling the small flowers _to hold on._

X

The streams of water were barely ankle deep but they hit with force. Alix saw people knocked off their feet, including Rumplestiltskin (he kept a death grip on the staff). But, waves of it rose up around her small army of ghosts.

"It seems I'm melting them," Zelena said as they sputtered out.

Alix grinned toothily. "Because they scared you. Admit it, Greenie, the past terrifies you, doesn't it? No wonder. You have such a lot of it."

"Once I change the past, you think that will matter?"

Alix wanted to give a cheeky reply, but a growl—a true growl, like a lion fighting for its meat—built in her chest and tore out of her. "Stupid witch," she spat. "Rumplestiltskin sees the future. _I _see the past. You can no more escape it than a tree can shed its roots. The past is a disease. It infects the present. It corrupts our futures. You can't change it. It's rotting you from the inside. It _made _you."

"Then, I will unmake it."

Talk about a brick wall. "Don't you understand? It _is _you. You carry it in every memory woven in your mind and every thread that weaves your flesh. How will you escape the darkness behind your own eyes?"

Zelena looked smug. "I think I just did. Or wasn't that what you were trying to send against me?"

Then, the water rose up, engulfing Alix.

The growl rose in her again. Fire was in her blood. It wanted to fight, to annihilate. Alix pulled it back, old lessons running through her head (so many eons ago, funny how the lessons of childhood always came back at moments like this).

She was fire. And she was night.

She didn't like water, but not because it was her opposite. It was a part of her, the cold darkness of the bottomless seas, the light dancing on waves or burning the eyes of those who went blind in the snow. Wonders that fell into its deeps might be found, still whole, millennia later—whole, but not unchanged. Preserver and transformer—weaver. The slow steps of its tidal dance were made in answer to the moon's music, servant of night's mistress, patiently keeping its secrets in the hidden darkness of its heart.

Revealer of truth, maker of dreams and lies. . . . She spun her thoughts into cold stillness, the memories of the fire-ghosts flickered in it, changing. Fire held only pain, destruction. Fire was forgetfulness, oblivion. Water held _meaning._

_The past is a disease. It infects the present. It corrupts our futures._

Alix pushed it back, but only enough to speak freely. Alix let her heart beat and felt its rhythm echoed in the cold around her, like a wave pulled by the tide. She let it draw fire away from her, becoming water, finding meaning in what she had seen in the flames.

"Your mother," Alix breathed. "The woman who raised you, you killed her. Jealous. You were jealous. Your father feared you, avoided you. But, never her. He loved her. You thought he would love you if only she were done away. You told him it was an accident, that you pushed her into the river, that your magic had slipped through your control. And he believed you. Or you thought he did. You told him you would keep it in check, and you tried because you hoped it would make him love you. But, you saw the fear in his eyes. He drank the better to hide from the truth. But, you knew he saw what you are."

Zelena shrugged. "He wasn't my father." She conjured another spell. Darkness, like the shadows out of the ocean depths, tangled as seaweed around a kraken's nest, wrapping around the unwary swimmer and dragging her down. Their tangled growths as sharp as the poisoned edges of certain corals.

Accident or intent, Alix didn't know, but the spell latched onto the element she had shaped herself to, the water's darkness and killing strength. It sucked up the water that had surrounded her. Even as she raised her arms to fight it off, she felt its knife-edge against her skin, trying to slice its way in, hungry as a shark after its prey.

X

"He wasn't my father," Belle heard Zelena say as she conjured another spell and threw it at Alecto. "That's why he hated me, why he was convinced I was wicked. But, I found a use for him all the same."

"Curse of the Empty-Hearted," Alecto gasped out between trying to do . . . _something _to hold back the shadows. "You . . . baked him . . . into a pie."

The Curse of the Empty-hearted, Belle knew this spell. Regina had tried to kill Snow once to cast it. It was made from the heart of the one you hated most. It couldn't create love but it could make whoever was tricked into eating _believe_ they loved you.

Zelena grimaced. "A pity Rumple wouldn't eat it."

Rumplestiltskin? Zelena had tried to cast this spell on Rumplestiltskin? And she'd murdered her _father _to do it?

It was before she had the dagger, Belle thought. Once she had it, she could have forced him to eat anything she wanted.

The shadows were reaching for Alecto's mouth, toothed-edges reaching hungrily. Alecto was trying to hold them back, but they seemed to be digging into her flesh. "I—never did—steal hearts—" she said. "Stupid—spell."

"You don't know what you're missing," Zelena smirked. "Too late now."

She had to do something, Belle thought. The poppies wouldn't stop her. She'd just burned them last time—but—

Belle remembered things Rumplestiltskin had told her about spells. She didn't have any magic, but Alecto had somehow handed this one off to her, linking her to it. She'd told her to concentrate, to visualize to get it to do what she wanted.

Belle thought of the figures sleeping beneath the piles of flowers (they had clung to their prey despite the waves of water). She tried to visualize the flowers as if she were inside them (like Alecto, standing the heart of Zelena's flames), part of the magic telling them to sleep, her voice whispering into their dreams.

_Fly, _she told them. She visualized Zelena as a shadow of black and green. _Go to her. Swarm her. _Stop _her._

The flowers shifted, but weren't pushed aside. They held onto the apes rising up. The creatures didn't try to fly. Instead, they ran on all fours across the ground, claws clattering against the damp pavement and splashing in the puddles. They charged at Zelena.

"No!" Alecto cried. "Stay back!"

The flowers burst into flames. The apes screamed, batting at the fires, rolling on the ground to put them out.

Fire burned across the shadow-weed burrowing across Alecto as she tore it off and threw it aside. She leaped across the remaining distance between her and the witch as lightly as one of the apes might have if it had stretched its wings. She seized Zelena by the throat. "You baked your father into a pie?" Alecto said, smiling. Her skin was as white as the heart of a furnace. Her hair writhed around her like flames, tormented faces appearing and disappearing as they danced. "I ate mine raw."

She'd been telling the truth about not using magic to steal hearts. As her hands stretched out into talons and tore through Zelena's chest, there was no spell making it neat and tidy. The thing she brought out was a dark, wet lump of flesh. It was still pulsing as she held it up for Zelena to see. Belle didn't know how it was possible, but the light of life still shone in Zelena's eyes.

Smiling, Alecto closed her claws around the heart, slicing it to bits. The light went out of Zelena's eyes as they closed. Alecto dropped her and the heart like so much garbage. Then, she turned around and faced them, a mad killer's smile on her inhuman face. In the blood-covered hand that had held Zelena's heart, she now held Rumplestiltskin's dagger.


	8. Crocodile Nests

Rumplestiltskin _felt _it as Alix picked up the dagger, the jolt of her magic as strong as if she were pressing her claws against his skin. He could feel fire and the warm damp of Zelena's blood.

She turned around and walked towards him. Her hair hung calm and limp around her, no serpent flames hissing out, fangs bared, nor any images of lost souls in torment around her. Everyone—Regina, the Savior, Belle, and the entire town—watched, holding their breath.

Alix reached him and knelt down, head bowed. She held the dagger up like an offering. "Dark One, I return to thee thine own."

Rumplestiltskin snatched it from her as if she might change her mind—or as if someone else might try to get it first. He handed the staff to Bae and felt the familiar rush of power come back to him. Power and freedom.

He took a deep breath, not quite sure he believed it. "Thank you."

X

Belle was the one who finally had the courage to come up and talk to her. Alix was sitting on the curb trying to look more worn out than she was. She figured it would be reassuring to the people around her if she looked weak and drained. _Sure, I took down the witch the entire, combined might of this town couldn't beat. But, boy, am I tired. _

The sheriff and her family, after a brief interrogation (with the promise of a more in depth one later) had gotten busy trying to clean up the street and check if anything more dangerous than a waterline had been broken. Alix could have told them not to worry. The power lines were safe from the water and none of the gas lines had been broken. A lot of fresh water had gotten into the sewer but, luckily (yes, by all means, call it luck. Alix didn't know about Rumplestiltskin, but _she _was ready to look innocent if anyone asked), not the other way around.

"Thank you," Belle said.

Facetious answers went through Alix' mind. _No problem, I enjoy a challenge. _Or, _Hey, just returning the favor. You should have seen what Rumple did the last time he was in _my _neighborhood. _Or, maybe, _No, thank _you, _I really enjoy a chance to kill things. _Or even, _Thank Rumplestiltskin. I like the way he parties._

"You're welcome," Alix said.

"You saved the people Zelena transformed," Belle went on. "Some of them would have died if you hadn't put them to sleep."

Because Zelena had had no mercy for her servants. Wounded or killed didn't matter. Once they were incapacitated, their bodies dissolved into a small cloud of dust, then nothing.

Alix didn't want to discuss the moral differences—or the lack of them—between her and Zelena. _At least, I know I owe something to the ones who serve me. _Instead, she gave a disapproving sniff. "That woman had no idea how to do transformations." Right, professional critique mixed with being snotty. That was always a safe route. "Where's the fun in destroying something like that? They were _amateurish_." Flying monkeys. How gauche.

Belle looked a little surprised but even more amused. Well, she must be used to Rumplestiltskin. And she wasn't buying it from Alix anymore than she would have from him. "Amateurish? Really? That's why you didn't destroy them?''

Alix rolled her eyes. "A _decent_ transformation has balance. My people see magic as patterns. A bird is shaped to the pattern of air. A fish is shaped to the patterns of water. If I wanted to turn a bird into a fish, I wouldn't just change its form. All you get that way is a confused bird. I wouldn't just give it a limited command structure, either. You know, a list of does and don'ts it has to follow when it goes swimming without any ability to think for itself. If I wanted that, I'd buy a wind-up paddle-toy and let it loose in the tub. I'd touch its pattern. I'd let the bird see how moving through water was like moving with wind.

"And, if I had a fish I hated for some reason, I might turn it into a desert creature and leave it in the sand without giving it that understanding. But, if I was being _really _nasty, I'd strengthen its pattern so it never forgot its longing for water." Or she might touch its pattern so it could become a creature of the desert, but it would know it would lose all chance of going home once it forgot what it was to be a creature of water. Or stay itself and suffer.

That was what Zelena had tried to do to Rumplestiltskin, Alix thought. Let him become what the witch wanted, the man who loved her, the man who was deliriously happy not to care about anyone else so long as Zelena got what she wanted, and the pain would go away. Give up his love for Belle and Bae and anything else in his soul that didn't suit her, and the hurting would stop.

Nope, not sorry she killed her.

"These were just people stuck in a form the witch picked on a whim. It was like ramming every round and square peg into a pinhole. And all they did was bare their fangs a little and do whatever Zelena told them. Boring. The average five year old can imagine something scarier under their bed any night of the week."

"And I suppose you could do something worse without thinking about it?"

Oh_, intelligent_ questions! No wonder Rumplestiltskin liked this woman. She deserved an answer just for asking (and for only looking curious while she did it instead of watching Alix as if she were a monster [even if she was]).

"Oh," Alix said airily. "I have done something worse. _ Lots_ of somethings."

"You said. . . ." Belle hesitated. Ah, the distinctive moment when someone was looking for the tactful way to say what wasn't tactful. "You said you . . . _ate_ you father."

No, no tactful way at all.

And still not looking at her like she was a monster. She was wary, certainly (she wasn't stupid, after all). But, there was none of the all-too-familiar tang of terror in the air.

Alix wasn't sure she wanted to change that by giving an honest answer. "Did I?"

Rumplestiltskin had come closer during their conversation. He was watching her with something like concern. "You did, dearie."

Had Belle been his stalking horse? Let the tactful, compassionate one lead up to this? Or did he just know when to step in?

Alix looked at him, weighing truth against silence. "Old news, friend. What does it matter?" Except, it did matter, didn't it?

And Rumplestiltskin knew that. "You always thought it was him. But, you didn't _know._"

Alix hunched over, studying the puddles in the street. Water, keeper of memory. There was no escaping it here.

_The past is a disease._

"Who else would they have used?"

Rumplestiltskin nodded. "Who else indeed? But, you were never certain. Now, you are."

Alix was silent a while. "My brother got married. Did I tell you that? Surprised me, too, when I finally caught up with him. Our track record on relationships. . . . Well, never let it be said we back off from insane, suicidal risks. He had three sons. And, in the way of all good fairy tales, two died and one survived. You know the drill." She saw something flash in the eyes of Rumplestiltskin, the man who had spent three hundred years searching for his son—who had _died _for his son—only to almost see it come to nothing at the end.

But, he didn't say it. And she would have pretended not to hear if he had, not on the open street surrounded by people who might or might not take it the way he would. "I've stood over their graves," Alix said. "And now I know. . . . I know what the blood of my family smells like when it's mortal and lost." She had never known them, the little ones who faced nightmares too soon to win against them, but she felt the gaping wound of their loss.

She looked at Baelfire, who was listening silently. She'd been half-expecting him to give her grief over killing Zelena, half-expected him not to understand. The witch had tried to murder her friend's son—had succeeded, if you thought about it—and Alix had stood over enough children's graves. But, he understood enough.

Rumplestiltskin, for his part, put his hand on Bae's shoulder as she spoke. She saw his fingers tighten, reassuring himself the boy was there. And alive. "I'm sorry, Alix."

She shrugged. "It was a long time ago." _The past infects the present._

Belle, however, frowned, following the details. "I don't understand. Someone transformed your father?"

Alix laughed. That was the problem with people who asked intelligent questions. What could Alix say to that? It was all an innocent mistake? Don't worry. I may have killed him, but it was an _accident. _"Oh, no. Someone transformed _me._

"It's a boring story, really. I'm sure you know the type. Evil overlords exploiting the peasants and killing them by inches, really gory inches. The people cry out for a savior. They get one. Or two, in my case. My brother and I are twins. Evil overlords try to murder the saviors as infants and fail. Said infants are whisked off to safety, relatively speaking, and given time to grow into their strength." Alix grimaced. "The problem, in our case is what whisked us to safety. There was a monster the lords kept in their menagerie. Sentient, I suppose. For a given value of sentience. Kind of the way a really hungry werewolf in killing frenzy is sentient. Technically, yes. Practical application-wise, not so much.

"He broke loose from his chains and whisked us away. Took mortal wounds doing it and died, but not before he got us to a very old and powerful one of his kind." And don't explain what 'one of his kind' was. Nobody here needed the nightmares. But, Alix let her hand shift, becoming flame colored and taloned, flexing her claws. Then, she shifted it back. What was it she had heard Zelena say her father told her? _We must put our best face forward._

_I wear a mask, _Alix thought. _But, I try to make it something more than just a mask._

"Magic is patterns," Alix said. "And my brother and I had a gift for feeling them, shaping them, _becoming _them. That was when we first changed, becoming like the creature who raised us. A little. Enough. I suppose it kept us hidden from the ones looking for us. For a while."

_I hunted prey with nothing but my teeth and claws before a human child could stand. I learned to strike quickly with no mercy._

_Later. . . . Later I would learn to do it slow. With even less mercy._

"Then, one day, there was something new in our hunting grounds. I remember the smell of fear, of blood. I hunted. My brother sensed something more. He tried to catch me, to hold me back. He was almost in time." Alix shrugged. "I told you our lords were evil. I don't know how they came to suspect what had happened to us and where we were—it's not exactly a likely tale, when you think about it—but they sent a man there to die. He was one of the people we'd been born to save. And I killed him. They knew we were there. And they'd scored a point. Killing changed me. I was no longer the hero I was supposed to be." Even though_ I remembered, _she thought. _As my brother pulled me off him, I remembered the darkness of my mother's womb and the first light of dawn on the morning I was born. I understood what I was and what I had done even while my humanity peeled away. Some of it. Not that I had much to begin with._

She thought of a fish in the desert, knowing what it would have to give up to survive.

"Long story short, we lived long enough to come into our strength and destroy the lords. Huzzahs all around. But, our people, the village we were born to, wasn't so lucky. I never knew what happened to my father. Not till—" She stopped and shrugged.

Alix looked one more time at the ruined street. "I was made to protect. And defend. Failing that, I avenge. And I try very hard not to be one of the things people need to be protected from. Not that it always works." And, if the parts of her that weren't human mixed in with that if her need to protect was as overwhelming and vicious as a mother crocodile protecting her nest, well, at least, that was a better outlet than some of the other things crocodiles could do, wasn't it?

Rumplestiltskin didn't trigger those instincts, Alix thought. Even when he needed her help, even when she'd felt that vicious satisfaction when she'd won and Zelena lost, she was pretty sure she'd felt it the way a human would.

The lords back home had been human.

"I guess I should get going," Alix said. "Before your little hero patrol comes after me. I don't know if I can keep a straight face if Regina goes into a spiel about 'Who killed my sister?' Any more questions before I go?"

"Two," Rumplestiltskin said. "What about Bae?"

"Ah," Alix looked at the boy. "I'm not sure. Who he was, who he became, that's still there. I think. I couldn't catch all the memories that formed it, but he's still that person inside. His self—his soul—the part I caught and wove into the bits I'd made to hold him, that remembers. And the part I made has memories from later on in his life. Just incomplete. Let him adjust. Let him form the connections between his past and his present. The parts he still carries in his soul, those might settle into the rest of him. Or not." Irritated at not being able to give a better answer, she snapped. "This isn't something I've done before." Miracles aren't supposed to be half-way, she thought. But, then, she monsters weren't supposed to create miracles. Let it go. "If he can, let him become what he was. If he can't, well, fifteen more years ought to make up the difference. And you're other question?"

Rumplestiltskin's eyes narrowed. "You killed Zelena. Why?"

"What is this, predator envy? You wanted to kill her yourself? Or do you actually think I should have let go?"

"Never. But, that's not what I asked. Why did _you_ kill her?"

Alix stood up. The two of them looked at each other, like wolves sizing each other up for a fight. Alix leaned in and whispered. "So, you wouldn't have to."

_Because, you would have had to kill her if someone else hadn't. Because, neither of us could take wounds this deep and just walk away. Because, I know what you would do to the witch who tortured you and killed your son, since I'd do the same and worse to the ones who murdered my nephews if my brother hadn't gotten there first. _

_And because I don't think the people who claim you as family could understand that. They would have walked away and let her live, and they wouldn't understand when that crocodile rage rose up in you and you couldn't. What joins you to them is too much like a fresh wound. It needs time to heal, time to be whole instead of tearing apart. And it's a wound you need to see closed before your life bleeds out of it._

_I didn't trust them to see that._

_So, right or wrong, I took the choice away from all of you._

Alix didn't say it. But, she watched Rumplestiltskin. He nodded slowly. "I see."

Alix grinned, showing her fangs. "You're welcome. If you ever need a hand, be sure to drop me a line. I love the way you party. There's never a dull moment. If your friends get upset I didn't wait, just tell them something snide. I'm sure you're up to it."

And she vanished. Not in smoke, because _everyone _(even Rumplestiltskin) did that. She made a spectacular exit in flames (style, when you get right down to it, is half the game).

And Rumplestiltskin was left alone on the street with his family.

Fin

X

Hope you enjoyed. Thank you for reading!


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